


no darkness will endure

by skitzofreak



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Podfic Available, Tumblr Prompt, Yavin IV, alternate universe - somebody lives, at the top of the wall, scene written based on lord of the rings scene, waiting for the darkness to fall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-15
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2019-03-31 17:44:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13980219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skitzofreak/pseuds/skitzofreak
Summary: He finds her on the roof, just over the hangar doors that gape at the Temple’s base. She’s far back enough from the edge that she cannot be seen from the ground, partially hidden by the shadow cast by the upper layers, and wedged between two old, crumbling pillars. It’s the exact spot he would have chosen, a perfect sniper’s nest with plenty of visibility from her point of view but with almost no access, protected on all sides and hard to spot. Instead of laying stretched out with a rifle, however, she’s leaning against the larger pillar, her arms folded around her middle and her face tilted up to the curve of Yavin, far above.-Two warriors, injured in battle and forced to wait for news of the distant battle, have a discussion about hope.





	no darkness will endure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Allatariel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allatariel/gifts).



> This story was written after a prompt from [@allatariel](https://allatariel.tumblr.com/) on tumblr, and then I re-read the scene in _Return of the King_ where Eowyn and Faramir stand on the walls of Minas Tirith and watch for their doom. 
> 
> Look! [@crazy-fruit](https://tmblr.co/mmsYqoXO9CaneTkAVkJocKw) drew this gorgeous pic of Jyn in the Rogue One version of the starry mantle:

He finds her on the roof, just over the hangar doors that gape at the Temple’s base. She’s far back enough from the edge that she cannot be seen from the ground, partially hidden by the shadow cast by the upper layers, and wedged between two old, crumbling pillars. It’s the exact spot he would have chosen, a perfect sniper’s nest with plenty of visibility from her point of view but with almost no access, protected on all sides and hard to spot. Instead of laying stretched out with a rifle, however, she’s leaning against the larger pillar, her arms folded around her middle and her face tilted up to the curve of Yavin, far above.

Briefly, Cassian wonders why the Death Star doesn’t just blast the gas giant itself rather than wait the twenty minutes or so left to get a clear line of sight on the base – wouldn’t destroying the planet take out all it’s moons, too? – but mostly, he finds himself concerned with the ragged remains of Jyn’s shirt. It’s the same shirt she wore on Wobani, the same one she wore throughout their month-long insane dash around the galaxy, the same one she wore on Scarif. It’s worn so thin in places that he can almost see her skin through the fabric, there are at least three carefully darned tears that he’s noted, and on her left side, the faded brown remnants of a large blood stain. Absently, Cassian rubs a hand across his right side, where newly-grafted skin itches around the memory of her body pressed against him.

He can’t do a thing about the Death Star, or the pathetic remnants of the Fleet that are even now desperately throwing themselves against it, or the slow burning rage in Leia Organa’s eyes every time someone barely stops themselves from whispering ‘ _just like Alderaan’_ in her hearing. He can’t do a damn thing about any of it, in fact, and most of his energy went into just climbing up here, looking for his – looking for Jyn. It’s the winter season on Yavin IV, which is still relatively balmy, of course, but means that cool winds tend to buffet these higher levels of the Temple. And Jyn’s shirt is clearly inadequate against even that slight chill.

“You’re supposed to be using a cane,” he calls from several steps away, letting her know that he’s there. He watches her shoulders tense and then relax, and her arms tighten around her waist, but she keeps her face turned upward.

“You’re supposed to be in bed,” she fires back, but there’s no real heat or accusation in it, only acknowledgement. Neither of them can stand to hang around medical at the best of times, let alone when their death is floating serenely through space towards them. A death, Cassian thinks as he slowly makes his way to her side, that perhaps has been too long in coming. He’d outrun it on Jedha, had been dragged from it on Scarif, but now…

“Do you think we’ll see it?” Jyn asks suddenly as he steps carefully into the narrow space between her and the second pillar. “The Death Star,” she jerks her chin towards the sky. “Think we’ll even see it?”

“I don’t know,” he answers honestly, watching her lips thin and her shoulders grow a little more rigid. She tilts her chin, her jaw set and her eyes narrow. Like she’s squaring up against the sky, bracing for the blow she can’t hope to block. It makes Cassian’s heart twist, and because there’s nothing he can do about that, either, he turns away from Yavin’s horizon and holds out the material in his hands. “Here.”

She drags her gaze down to look at him, and then at his hands, and he almost smiles at the way her mouth drops slightly open and her eyes widen. “Where did you get this?”

“Quartermasters,” he shrugs one shoulder carefully, because he tried it with both this morning and that had…not worked out well.

Jyn unfolds her arms slowly and takes the grey shirt from him. It’s thick, sturdy material, not much different from his own practical work shirts, but Cassian didn’t pick this one from the supply pile for the material. He’s a little bit embarrassed to admit why he  _did_  chose it, but since he probably only has about fifteen minutes left to live, he firmly decides not to worry about it.

Jyn traces her finger down the neat dark blue stitching along the collar. It’s small, just a scattering of dark stylized stars that twist over one shoulder and disappear into the back of the collar, and at close inspection it’s obvious that the embroidery is meant to obscure the edges of a patch, where the material on the shoulder had been damaged too badly to just be stitched back together.

“You’re a man of hidden talent,” Jyn muses, raising an eyebrow even as her fingers trace gently along the stars.

That does pull a smile from him, small and weak under the weight of their imminent deaths, but there. “I am,” he agrees lightly, “but I can’t take credit for this. One of the quartermasters apparently passes her free time making the donations and recycled clothes…” he makes a vague gesture, “prettier.”

Her mouth curls slightly at the corner, and more importantly, she doesn’t glance back up at the sky. “Prettier.”

“She fixed one of my jackets a few years ago,” Cassian recalls. “The inside pocket was torn out, and my hands were - ”  _nearly burned to the bone_  “- healing,” he swallows quickly and rushes on, and though Jyn’s eyes flick to him, she doesn’t interrupt, doesn’t ask about the hitch in his voice. “She sewed a flowering vine of some kind into it. She said it was for good fortune.”

“Pretty,” Jyn murmurs, and then to Cassian’s disappointment, she hands the shirt back to him. His stomach drops, and his hands feel cold; he tries to shrug it off, but before he can think of anything to say, any way to handle the abrupt rejection, Jyn crosses her arms and grabs the hem of her shirt and –

Oh.

She pulls it up and over her head smoothly, and Cassian’s instinct is to turn his head and look away the moment he sees the pale skin of her belly. Except there is nowhere to look but the silent jungle that might burn to ash in about ten minutes, and the great blue sky that will unleash the fire. And if he’s going to die with her anyway (like he should have, more than once already), then he’s going to spend his last few minutes accepting whatever she is offering him. So Cassian holds the new shirt in his hands and watches Jyn toss the old one carelessly to the stone floor, and when she looks up at him, he meets her eyes. She reaches for his gift again, pauses with it in her hands, and then suddenly lifts her chin again, but this time to him, a challenge, and an invitation.

He has maybe eight minutes to live, so Cassian takes it. He leans back against the pillar and looks at her, at the heavy-duty combat bra she must have scrounged from Yavin’s stores at some point (she got _that_ , but didn’t get a shirt too? Or did she think that would be asking too much?), at the smooth skin across her torso, shoulders, and arms, marred and broken by old scars and new skin grafts. He looks at the tension in her posture and the bruises on her knuckles, the shackle scars on her wrists and the faint depression on her ribcage that marks where her ribs had once broken and been patched together without bacta or bone stabilizers. The skin graft on her right shoulder, the one turned towards the blast when she held him on Scarif, is an angrier red than the rest of her marks, although he can see that the lines are already blurring gently into her skin. His hands itch suddenly, a powerful urge to reach out and run his palms over the curve of her shoulders and down the slopes of her sides, but if he only has seven minutes left in this life, he’s not going to spend them crossing the boundaries of someone who matters the way Jyn matters to him.

So he simply looks, and then meets her eyes again and this time the smile comes easily to his face.  “Beautiful,” he says simply, honestly, and Jyn stares at him, clearly not braced for that blow at all, but Cassian doesn’t take it back.

Another fitful breeze raises bumps all along her bared skin, and at last Jyn tugs the new shirt over her head. It’s a little long, and settles around her hips more like a tunic than a shirt. Her crystal necklace hangs in the unbuttoned gap at her collar, and she absently brushes the stars on her shoulder. Cassian’s hands almost ache with the impulse to touch her, but he stays where he is and watches.

“I’m - ” Jyn frowns, but it’s more into the distance than at him, so he doesn’t flinch. “I think I’m afraid,” she whispers hoarsely, and drops her eyes to ground, her head bowing as if in shame.

That galvanizes him, because Jyn with her head bowed is unnatural somehow, wrong, and he doesn’t think he could stand it even if they weren’t in their last minutes together. Cassian shoves off the pillar and reaches out at last, careful and slow but determined to do this, to fix this one small but vital thing before he is all out of chances. Jyn’s eyes close but she curls her fingers when he slips his hand into hers, and tugs gently until he’s close enough that she can rest her forehead against his collarbone, her breath light and warm on his chest.  “Do you think it will be…” she trails off, and Cassian cups his free hand around the back of her neck and runs his thumb lightly against her pulse point, indulging himself in this little audacity, this tiny luxury.

“I keeping dreaming it,” he confesses into the last few minutes they have. Far above them, he guesses that the first grey curve of the Empire’s monstrous ambition is probably peering around the gas giant’s sheltering bulk, but his vision is full of brown hair and dark blue stars, and he doesn’t look up. “The light,” he continues, when Jyn makes a small, encouraging noise low in her throat, her other hand settling delicate as a butterfly on his undamaged hip. “Rising towards us like a wave, too fast to escape.”

“But we did,” she says to their feet. “That time.” She lifts her head and slides closer, turning her face towards his neck and sending a shock of warmth and want and desperate, terrible sadness rippling through his body. It’s Scarif, it’s just like Scarif, and so Cassian wraps both arms around her and holds her tightly. To his immeasurable relief, she hugs him back, her arms tender but certain around his bandaged ribs. “Guess that was one time too many,” her lips brush his throat, and Cassian closes his eyes and bends his head, pressing his face as close to hers as he can, shutting out the world around them.

“No,” he says, and to his own surprise, he’s still being honest. They have survived the  _planet killer_  twice already, found a lost pilot in the middle of a desert, found a lost father in the middle of an Imperial prison, and above all, found each other in the middle of an uncaring universe. How could he look at those incredible, impossible achievements, those momentous victories, and be anything other than hopeful? How could he feel her hands gripping the back of his shirt and her heartbeat so steady against his chest and be anything but ecstatic, elated,  _exultant?_

“No, Jyn,” he says (and perhaps he’s wrong and they have only a minute or two left, but if he is right,  _if he is right_  -) “I think we’re going to live,” he tells her, and then he laughs, his arms full and his eyes closed, and he laughs as Jyn tilts her face up to look at him without pulling away, “We’re going to  _live_ , Jyn.” And then she is laughing too, soft and uncertain and beautiful. Cassian turns his head and presses his mouth to her forehead, and this time when she shivers, it has nothing to do with the wind at all.

Somewhere far away from their laughter, the Death Star lights up the darkness of space with a blinding flash, and then fades at last, nothing more than glittering stardust and memory.

**Author's Note:**

> _'It reminds me of Numenor,' said Faramir, and wondered to hear himself speak._
> 
>  
> 
> _'Of Numenor?' said Eowyn._
> 
>  
> 
> _'Yes,' said Faramir, 'of the land of Westernesse that foundered, and of the great dark wave climbing over the green lands and above the hills, and coming on, darkness inescapable. I often dream of it.'_
> 
>  
> 
> _'Then you think that the Darkness is coming?' said Eowyn. 'Darkness inescapable?' And suddenly she drew close to him._
> 
>  
> 
> _'No,' said Faramir, looking at her face. 'It was but a picture in the mind. I do not know what is happening. The reason of my waking mind tells me that great evil has befallen and we stand at the end of days. But my heart says nay; and all my limbs are light, and a hope and joy are come to me that no reason can deny. Eowyn, Eowyn, White Lady of Rohan, in this hour I do not believe that any darkness will endure!' And he stooped and kissed her brow._


End file.
